That’s it for 2016 stories. Time to bring 2017 in! We’d love to hear your suggestions for 2017 stories, anything you’ve loved in the first few months of the new year. We’ll be on a short hiatus until April, and then we’ll see what you’ve been reading!

I’ve given up trying to identify trends, but you see a much broader field than I do 🙂

Have you read the WIRED Science-Fiction issue? How was that? Seemed like an impressive selection of authors, although I don’t know what to expect from WIRED. Right now that’s on the top of my to-read list for 2017 fiction…

I didn’t notice the Wired issue when it came out, but the stories in it are dated 2016, so they’re probably not Hugo-eligible for next year. I know SFWA already ruled they’re not eligible for the Nebulas next year.

The eligibility rule for the Hugos (much like the one for the Nebulas) says “Publication date, or cover date in the case of a dated periodical, takes
precedence over copyright date,” and Wired does have a print edition with a 2017 date, but each individual story has its own publication date right on it, and those are all in 2016. For the Nebulas, they decided that the rule about using the cover date only applied to stories that didn’t have individual publication dates.

Well, the Hugos aren’t the Nebulas, so perhaps the logic will be different. I like the idea that you use the date that’s closest to the story. So if an online story has a date right on it, then you use that. If not, you use the publication date for the issue. If there is no pub date for the issue, or it’s not online at all, you use the issue date. Failing all else, you use the copyright date.

Given how they read it for “Molokesh the Destroyer” you may be right that they’ll be considered 2017 for purposes of the Hugo Awards. They’ve already been ruled out for the Nebula, though.